Real Steel (2011)

Real Steel Synopsis

A gritty, white-knuckle, action ride set in the near-future, where the sport of boxing has gone hi-tech, Real Steelstars Hugh Jackman as Charlie Kenton, a washed-up fighter who lost his chance at a title when 2000-pound, 8-foot-tall steel robots took over the ring. Now nothing but a small-time promoter, Charlie earns just enough money piecing together low-end bots from scrap metal to get from one underground boxing venue to the next. When Charlie hits rock bottom, he reluctantly teams up with his estranged son Max (Dakota Goyo) to build and train a championship contender. As the stakes in the brutal, no-holds-barred arena are raised, Charlie and Max, against all odds, get one last shot at a comeback.

When one thinks of the successes of Hugh Jackman, flashes of snikt snikt Wolverine blades or those incredible pipes out of Les Miserables come to mind. But the Australian A-Lister still holds a special place in his heart for Charlie Kenton, the robot boxing promoter (or boxing robot promoter?) at the center of 2011's Real Steel. It turns out, Jackman is still eying a comeback for this character.

In Real Steel Hugh Jackman plays Charlie Kenton, a crappy dad who wants to get his robot boxing career and his relationship with his son back on track. If you haven’t caught it yet, Real Steel will hit Blu-Ray, DVD, and digital download on January 24th. As far as special features go, DVD copies are getting the short end of the stick with this release.

The studio grabbed the rights to Michael Vukadinovich’s The Three Misfortunes of Geppetto, which is a prequel to the classic Pinocchio story. The puppet maker lives a life of “misfortune, war and adventure all to be with Julia Moon, his true love." They also compare the project, in scope, to Tim Burton’s Big Fish or Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride, which suggests a mix of swashbuckling action and humor.

It's remake season at the box office this weekend, and for once, the lack of originality seems to be hurting them. Yes, early Friday numbers have Footloose edging ahead of Real Steel to win the weekend, with $5.4 million yesterday over the $4.4 million for the boxing robots

There were plenty of big stories on the big screen this weekend, but none of them pulled in the big bucks. Real Steel's concept of robot boxing garnered the largest share of audience attention, taking first place with $27 million, a respectable total for the usually sleepy month of October.

The latest, I, Frankenstein, casts Aaron Eckhart as a unique version of the Frankenstein monster who is living in our modern time thanks to “a genetic quirk in his creation.” Stuart Beattie will direct this film from an adaptation of Kevin Grevioux’s graphic novel. Production is due to start in Australia in January. The film is eyeing a Feb. 22, 2013 release date.

Jeremy Renner wasn’t the only actor in The Hurt Locker to see his career skyrocket after the movie won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Since then, Anthony Mackie has landed a large number of diverse roles, from being a member of The Adjustment Bureau to battling vampires with Benjamin Walker in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

Countless reviewers are falling back on various iterations of “Rocky with Robots” in their critiques. And while that’s accurate, it also misses the other movies Levy … well, I don’t want to say steals from, simply because Steel already is in the film’s title. Let’s say “borrows” from, so as not to point fingers

A lot of people-- including, I admit, yours truly-- expected Real Steel to be an easy critical flop, an overcooked father-son saga with that added ludicrous element of boxing robots. But in fact, even our own Josh Tyler-- whose review of Real Steel will be posted on the site soon-- says the boxing robots are in fact that best thing Real Steel has going for it

Big happenings in the Rotten World this week. In addition to tackling the subtle art of telling you what’s going to be good, and what’s going to suck, the critical prediction machine is taking on a challenger. I’ve had it with these internet nobodies claiming they can do this sh$% better than the Dougster. No chance. At least not when we’ve got robot boxers and presidential candidates roaming around the big screen

From these clips, three of them put together most of the scene that seemingly strips Jackman of his prized robot Noisy Boy, champion in the Japanese robot fighting circuit. Noisy Boy and Jackman lose a big fight to Spartan and his handler which prompts the search for a new robot to start fighting. On the hunt in another clip, Jackman details the progression of the robot fighting sport

Real Steel hasn’t even hit theaters yet and there’s already buzz about a sequel. Of course, nothing is set in stone at this point, but word is, director Shawn Levy sounds up to the task of taking the robot-boxing story even further, should things work out for the first one when it’s released next month.

The latest posters for the upcoming robot-boxing film Real Steel are giving viewers a free look at the gun show. And by that, I mean a glimpse at the big, metal “muscles” of the robots set to fight each other. What’s more, each of the featured robots names are revealed at the top.

If Real Steel turns out to be what it’s selling in these promos, we could be looking at a film about human spirit and inner strength as demonstrated through the body of a big, punching robot. In that respect, Eminem’s “Til I Collapse,” which touches on the subject of inner strength, is most definitely a fitting song to play over the sequence of scenes shown in this TV spot.

Real Steel from the day it was announced has sounded like the silliest movie we’re going to see this year. But we are going to see it, and that is what’s important. Hugh Jackman teaming up with his estranged son to train a championship-level boxing robot? I mean how can you say no to that.

Director Robert Zemeckis has had an up and down kind of career. Sure he’s the man behind such greats as Back to the Future and Forrest Gump, but he also produced Gothika, Ghost Ship, and his most recent utter flop Mars Needs Moms. While he hasn’t always produced greatness, his directorial skills are strong and we should be excited he’ll be working with real humans next rather than CGI zombies again

No matter how many trailers, plot descriptions, and TV spots I watch/read, I can't get my head around Real Steel. I love boxing movies because they have a great way of creating emotional resonance from physical brutality, but how do you get that when the human is standing outside of the ring throwing shadow punches while two hunks of metal swing at each other?

I've always felt that one of the principle reasons why video games don't make good movies is because film downgrades the medium from active to passive. No matter how good a game is, you don't want to spend two hours on the couch watching your friend play; you want to take the controller and give it a whirl yourself. Now we're literally getting to the point where we are watching movies about people playing Wii Boxing. How else do you describe Real Steel?

Yes it's full of a lot of boxing cliches, a lot of father-son cliches and any other kind of cliche you can imagine, and yes Hugh Jackman's rough and tumble accent is a little iffy, but the basic appeal of watching robots box has never seemed more certain. You can check out the trailer below

John Gatins, who wrote the screenplay for the first film, has started on a sequel, though there doesn't seem to be any other commitment at the studio at this point. Hiring someone to write a screenplay is a relatively cheap way to get the process moving on a sequel without waiting to see how box office does

I asked him about how different this film's tone might be from those comedies, how much of an all-ages movie Real Steel might be, and pressed them for details about the film's "hero robot" Atom, who is brought up out of a junkyard by Jackman's character and his son

Real Steel is directed by Night at the Museum mastermind Shawn Levy, which led me to anticipate something brightly colored and maybe a little goofy. What we see here, though, is like Transformers filtered through The Wrestler

Do you think you have what it takes to act alongside Wolverine? Well now is your chance to hit it big because Dreamworks wants YOU to send in your audition tape and star alongside Hugh Jackman in Real Steel

Filming on Shawn Levy’s Real Steel will kick off in June in Michigan. Minus the images of Jackman sweating over a plastic, childhood game, the concept has potential. The thing that keeps most from taking the project seriously is that tacky title

We have been writing about Shawn Levy's Real Steel for around two months now, and I still can't help but giggle each time I read something about it (it's a manly giggle, but still). The film reads like a simple boxing story, but it is as though

What do you get when you mix Rocky and Robot Jox? I'm not entirely sure, but it sounds an awful lot like what Dreamworks has planned for Real Steel. If it sounds hokey to you, you might take some solace (or despair...take your pick) in the fact that Hugh Jackman is in talks to star.

With Peter Berg talking up both a Battleship movie and a Hancock sequel recently, obviously something was going to have to give. Now it seems Berg has given the boot to his planned robot boxing movie Real Steel, and has passed it on to, of all people, Shawn Levy